Language
I have been fortunate in having had some interesting and valuable
linguistic material placed at my disposal for publication by Father
Egedi and in having had further material added to it by Dr. Seligmann
and Mr. Sidney H. Ray. I have thought it better to deal with it in
five appendices, and I am greatly indebted to Mr. Ray for having
undertaken the laborious task of their compilation. I give the
following explanation concerning these appendices.
(1) Is a grammar of the Fuyuge language. The original manuscript is
the work of Father Egedi, the, materials from which it was prepared
by him having been collected in the Mafulu villages. The appendix is
Father Egedi's Grammar, translated and edited by Mr. Ray.
(2) Is a short note on the Afoa language prepared by Dr. W. M. Strong,
when he was Government Agent in Mekeo, and handed by him to
Dr. Seligmann for publication. To this note Mr. Ray has added
a footnote.
(3) Is a note on the Kovio language prepared by Dr. Strong, and handed
by him to Dr. Seligmann. This note refers to the languages spoken in
the neighbourhoods of Inavarene and the Inava valley and of the Upper
Lakekamu river, all of which were found by Dr. Strong to be somewhat
similar. The footnote is by Mr. Ray.
(4) Is a comparative vocabulary, prepared by Mr. Ray, of the
languages of some of the different Papuan-speaking people of the
mountain districts of Central British New Guinea. The words in the
"Mafulu" column are taken from a very lengthy MS. vocabulary compiled
by Father Egedi in Mafulu. Those in the "Kambisa" column were all
collected by the Rev. P. J. Money in the Kambisa villages of the
Upper Chirima valley during Mr. Monckton's expedition, referred to
in my introductory chapter. Most of these words are taken from the
New Guinea _Annual Report_ for 1905-6; but to them have been added
other words, which had been collected by Mr. Money. The words in
the "Korona" column are taken from an MS. vocabulary prepared by
Dr. Strong at Korona, also mentioned in my introductory chapter,
and handed by him to Dr. Seligmann. Those in the "Afoa" column are
taken from an MS. vocabulary prepared by Dr. Strong in connection
with his Afoa notes, to which are added in square brackets some other
words taken from Father Egedi's vocabulary in _Anthropos_ II., 1907,
pp. 1016-1021, this vocabulary being there called by him Tauata. The
words in the "Kovio" column are taken from an MS. vocabulary prepared
by Dr. Strong in connection with his Kovio notes, to which are added
in square brackets some "Oru-Lopiku" words collected by Father Egedi,
and published in _Anthropos_ II., 1907, pp. 1016-1021. As regards this
column I must explain that Dr. Strong's words were all collected within
the districts to which his notes refer, but that Father Egedi's words,
though in part collected there, were, I believe, in part collected
further to the east.
(5) Is a series of notes by Mr. Ray upon the matter contained in the
previous appendices.
I am perhaps open to criticism for introducing into a book of my
own notes on the Mafulu people such extensive material written by
others, and relating to other mountain districts as well as to that
of the Mafulu; but my belief as to the probable similarity in many
respects between the Papuan-speaking natives of these central mountain
districts, and the obvious value and importance of the matter which
has been so kindly placed at my disposal, justify me, I think, in
introducing it; and indeed I should be doing but ill service to New
Guinea ethnology if I did not take advantage of these opportunities
which have been offered to me.
Though I am not qualified to discuss these materials from the
grammatical and scientific linguistic point of view, there are a
few matters to which I should like to draw attention, as affecting
statements appearing in this book, and which were written by me before
I received this linguistic material.
Regarding the question raised in my introductory chapter as to the
extension of the Fuyuge linguistic area so far south as Korona, it
will be noticed that a large number of the words in the Mafulu and
Korona columns are the same, or very similar. Dr. Strong, in some
unpublished MS. notes in Dr. Seligmann's possession, to which I have
had access, says as regards the Mafulu and Korona languages that "there
is nothing to show that the two languages may not be for all practical
purposes identical," and Mr. Ray in his concluding notes classes Mafulu
and Korona together as dialects of Fuyuge. The village of Sikube,
mentioned by Mr. Ray, is, I believe, on the Upper Vanapa river and
north of Mt. Lilley, and so is well within the Fuyuge-speaking area
as defined by the Fathers.
Concerning the Kambisa (Upper Chirima valley) column, the similarity
of many of the words contained in it to those in either the Mafulu
or the Korona column is obvious; and it is curious that some of these
words appear to resemble the Korona words more than they do those of
Mafulu. I also think I may say that the similarity between Kambisa
words on the one hand, and those of either Mafulu or Korona on the
other, is almost equal to the similarity between Mafulu and Korona;
and Mr. Ray classes Kambisa along with Mafulu and Korona as dialects
of Fuyuge. So the statement in the introductory chapter that the
valley of the Upper Chirima river is included in the Fuyuge area has,
I think, stood the test of some detailed linguistic comparison.
The note by Dr. Strong upon what he calls the Kovio language and his
Kovio vocabulary both relate to a district which is within the Fathers'
Oru-Lopiku linguistic area; and I venture to repeat the suggestion,
made in my introductory chapter, that for the present should adopt
the term Kovio for the two areas which the Fathers call Oru-Lopiku
and Boboi, though eventually we may be able to distinguish between
these two areas.
The Afoa or Tauata area is the Fathers' Ambo area. The Afoa column
discloses a very few words which resemble the Fuyuge words; but it
seems obvious that the Afoa language does not belong to the Fuyuge
group, and this is the view taken of it by Mr. Ray.
There are two matters in Mr. Ray's classification in the fifth appendix
which I wish to mention. It seems to have been already assumed that
the Rev. James Chalmers' Kabana language could not have been collected
on Mt. Victoria; and I would point out that this mountain is quite
outside what now appears to be the Fuyuge area. As regards the Afoa
language the references by Dr. Strong to Mt. Pizoko and Mt. Davidson
bring me back to my observations upon the point in my introductory
chapter. If the Fathers are right in putting Mt. Pizoko within the
Fuyuge area, it is hardly correct to say (see introductory chapter)
that the Afoa language is spoken in the villages on Mt. Pizoko; but
it might well be, as quoted by Mr. Ray, that a Fuyuge native in a
Mt. Pizoko village spoke Afoa fluently, as this mountain is close to
the Fathers' Fuyuge-Afoa boundary. Also Mt. Davidson is according to
the Fathers in the Boboi area; but Dr. Strong seems to have regarded
it as Ambo, and to have treated vocabulary matter collected from a
native who came from a village "apparently on the slopes of" that
mountain as having been taken from an Ambo native. In this case,
however, there seems to be some doubt as to where this native did in
fact come from; and the eastern slopes of Mt. Davidson are not far
from the Fathers' Afoa boundary.
I think that these linguistic materials, taken as a whole, are, so far
as they go, well in accord with the delimitation by the Fathers of
the Fuyuge area, except as regards their view concerning Korona, as
to which they did not profess actual knowledge, and merely expressed
a doubt, and subject to the point that, for linguistic purposes at
all events, the Fathers' use of the word "Mafulu" as representing
the whole Fuyuge area is perhaps not desirable, and would be better
replaced by the term "Fuyuge," with subdivisions of "Mafulu," "Korona,"
and "Kambisa," as given by Mr. Ray; though probably Sikube might be
included in either Mafulu or Korona, as geographically it is evidently
between these two.